Athens Answers the Foreign Minister of FYROM

The claims of the Foreign Affairs Minister of FYROM Nikola Poposki that “Greece is moving unilaterally to the suspension of the Interim Agreement”, were denied with a written statement that was distributed to the Media of FYROM by the head of the Contact Office in Greece in Skopje, ambassador Alexandra Papadopoulou.

As it is stated, Greece, since the signing of the Interim Agreement in 1995, applies this Agreement in good faith and has never expressed any intention to suspend it. “However”, it is noted, “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia never accepted the Interim Agreement as an agreement that imposes parallel and mutual obligations on both sides”.

Mrs Papadopoulou goes on to accuse the Gruevski government that especially since the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008, it has given itself “to an unprecedented policy of hostility and irredentism toward Greece, continuing its theft of Greek historical symbols, as is the use of the sun of Vergina, and creating doubts for the real territorial status quo in the South of the Balkans”.

Noting that the Greek government has, during the last years, lodged numerous notes of protest to the authorities of FYROM, indicating that such actions directly violate the spirit and the letter of the Interim Agreement and undermine the amicable relations between the two countries, mrs Papadopoulou reminds that with these official notes Greece has asked the government of FYROM to abandon its irredentist plans and that it stop illegal activities against Greece, but also that it participate in good faith in the negotiations for the solution of the name issue, within the UN.

“The government of FYROM”, ends the note, “has ignored these calls and instead of focusing with good faith on the negotiations within the UN, gives itsel to an effort to defame Greece and turn the attention of the International Community away from the solution of the issue, despite the fact that the continued unresolved state of this issue seriously undermines the stability of the whole region”.

Progovernment media in Skopje, as is the television station “Kanal 5”, meaningfully comment that “Greek diplomacy, in this statement, makes no mention to the fact that the International Tribunal of Hague, in its verdict, rejected all the accusations that are referred to in the statement, and found that it was Greece that violated the Interim Agreement and that “Macedonia” has not violated a single point of the Agreement”.

The newspaper “Dnevnik” writes that diplomatic sources in FYROM comment that the ambassador of Greece should perhaps send this letter of protest to the Hague Tribunal rather than the media of FYROM.